Medication is often packaged in dispensing sheet form. In particular, a dispensing sheet may include a plurality of compartments or blisters formed therein, with each compartment or blister storing a medication unit therein. In order to dispense a medication unit for use or consumption, a user may press on the front side of the sheet, thereby forcing the medication unit through the rear of the sheet.
Institutional medical facilities, such as nursing homes, typically utilize such dispensing sheets in a form commonly known as “bingo cards.” Such bingo cards may include a relatively large number of medication units stored therein. For example, a typical bingo card includes thirty, thirty-one or various other numbers of medication units to supply at least a month's worth of medication units to a particular user.
Institutional medical facilities are under increasing pressures to increase the efficiency of their medication dispensing practices. For example, Chapter 1146 of United States Pharmacia guidelines, which are widely adopted in part or in whole by state legislatures, now allows for “reprocessing” of bingo cards by removing a bingo card from its cardboard carrier (while the medication units are still maintained in their original blisters) and placing the bingo card into another cardboard carrier. In particular, when a user of a particular bingo card ceases use of a medication in a particular bingo card (i.e. due to a change in condition, change in prescription, expiration of the user, or other causes) the institutional medical facility may desire to dispense the remaining, unused medication units in the bingo card to another user.
However, existing bingo cards may be difficult to tear to separate the compartments containing medication from the empty storage compartments. Furthermore, even if bingo cards include perforations or the like to allow the filled and emptied storage compartments to be separated from each other, such perforation lines may be prone to tearing when dispensing individual ones of the medication unit (i.e. pushing a medication unit through the rear of the dispensing sheet). Accordingly, there is a need for a storage and dispensing unit having a tear guide line which can be easily accessed, and a storage and dispensing unit which will allow storage compartments to be separated yet which is robust enough to withstand dispensing of individual components.